I have been involved with PCs since the 1980s and gaming on PCs since then as well and when the first First Person Shooters arrived, I was so there.  Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake, Unreal, all these games defined the medium at one time or another even while other titles hit the shelves with carrying degrees of success.

And then came the Call of Duty franchise.  I played Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2 and my kids bought me Call of Duty 3 for the Wii as an end of season present in 2007 after I was done with the PA Ren Faire.  And then Call of Duty 4 came out with a blend of achievements and unlocks and modern weapons and all the rest that made it a run-away smash hit and a hell of a lot of fun to play.  COD4 did nothing new, It stole some of the best ideas from other games and gave us a balanced and thoughtful environment.

When Call of Duty 5 was announced (call it anything you want, it's 5) i was ecstatic.  Then I learned it was back to WWII but would incorporate the whole unlock and rank concept and decided to give it a go.  Bleh.  As annoying as the helicopter is in COD4, at least it does not enter the map from behind a wall right on top of you like the damn dogs do.  Nor are the uniform colors in COD4 the same color as the background so that you can lay in the middle of the street and snipe.   Nor is the spawn system in COD4 as completely whacked as it is in COD5.  And the prestige mode added in 5?  An extra slot for a custom class is not the best reward for having to lose Dead Silence. 

But I play it because I have it and can choose a game type and environment from Tactical to Bolts to whatever and besides, there was still COD4:MW2 (let's call it 6, it's easier) coming out merely a year later.  Hells to the yeah!

And then we heard about riot shields and other oddities and then no dedicated servers or mods or specifying game rules or kicking or banning folks and now there's a tactical nuke for a 25 kill streak.

So what we have is a great and modern FPS that has become a "feed me quarters" video game.  While I dearly love me some video games, I don't play them when I want to play a team based FPS.  It's the same reason I don't do PvP in MMOs. If I want to do PvP I will go on a FPS where my tactical decisions are more effective than whatever magic item I bought after getting $35 billion in game money off of E-bay.

I won't be getting COD6.  I will be looking to update my OS and take a look at Shattered Horizons though.  A FPS with aspects of a flight sim?  think Descent with team play.  Plus at $15 I figure I can hate it and not feel like an idiot, like I did after I bought COD5 and realised what a dog it was.

Should Infinity Ward decide to return to PC gaming, I'll take a look at their next offering but right now all they have managed to do is make Treyarch's COD 5 boondoggle look friggin brilliant.

Well done IW and bite me.